£100 million to 'address past wrongs of slavery'

[Sausagenbacon]

AIBU to think that the Anglican Church has lost it's mind?
Slavery was, as is (though the church isn't as interested in that) abhorrent. But how can you address historical wrongs by spending money?

Education? Like everyone doesn't know that Slavery is a Bad Thing.

It's really not that simple. It's about history, politics, psychology. It's about the overton window and human rights law, it's about how governments overstep their mandates, it's about unconscious bias and othering of out-groups. Education has a huge role to play in addressing historical travesties with a view to making the world a better place, and thankfully there are large organisations, including governments, NGOs and yes, churches, who agree.

I am not going to pay I did not do anything
Plenty of black Africans enslaved other Africans and Irish
They should pay

No
It is not the current owners - directors
Many drugs that are now used are developed by forms that had slaves in Germany in ww2
If you were dying would you refuse them

Fine but i am not interested in paying for it with my taxes

I don't disagree with you, I just want to add that "Britain benefited from slavery" should really read "wealthy Britons benefited from slavery".

A cotton mill worker in the 19th century was no more able to influence or benefit from slavery than I am today.

(I have skin in the game on both sides, as it happens. Slaves, slave owners and working class. I just don't think it's fair to lump my WC ancestors in with the rest because they nominally belong to the same empire.)

I'm really baffled by your response to this OP. As an anglican, you don't think the Anglican church should be attempting to address a past wrong by giving back to the communities who to this day are still impacted by the legacy of slavery? Why? sounds to me it's exactly what they should be doing. I'm a member of an Anglican church, and very happy for the money I give to be used in this way.

There is more detail in the full press release than in the news article you linked, and this in particular stood out for me:

"A new oversight group will be formed during 2023 with significant membership from communities impacted by historic slavery. This group will work with the Church Commissioners on shaping and delivering the response, listening widely to ensure this work is done sensitively and with accountability".

Doesn't sound to me like the money is going to be wasted or end up in the hands of corrupt governments.

Oh, and working to combat modern slavery is not ignored:

"The Church Commissioners will also continue to use its voice as a responsible investor to address and combat modern slavery and human rights violations, and to seek to address injustice and inequalities".

Full press release

I don't believe we can address past wrongs. That's all. We should focus on the present by ensuring that everyone has equal opportunities.

That £100m would go along way to address them in West Africa.

I don't really see what you are arguing against tbh, unless you are against all foreign aid as it would be subject to corruption.

Christian charities do huge good in Africa... but not all Anglicans are Christian.

But surely, as christians, we are very much called on to address past wrongs. There can't be any healing or reconciliation without. I think what the Anglican church is trying to do here is absolutely in line with Jesus' teaching:

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift." Matthew 5:23-24

Straight from the sermon on the mount!

It continues to surprise me how little people know about basic history and it's impact on present day inequalities - globally.

The wealth that the UK has today was largely powered by slavery & colonialism.

As an example, the commodities used to power the industrial revolution were obtained through centuries of free labour which we ALL still benefit from today.

The UK made much of its wealth from cotton, tea, sugar etc, and none of that is grown here. People certainly weren't adequately compensated for the farming of these commodities (and still aren't), let alone compensated adequately for the commodities themselves. Again, and they still aren't.

The Carribbean as an example, is literally a collection of islands inhabited by the descendants of enslaved people. They do not have healthcare, education, business infrastructure etc anything close to what we have here.

The money made from that land and those people wasn't reinvested there, it was invested here.

Reparations doesn't have to be about tracking direct descendants. We can look at funding hospitals, roads, transport infrastructure, telecoms, education, global warming protections, even funding spaces in educational institutions here for those students to redress some of the stark disparities.

If somebody stole from your grandmother 100 years ago, and this was a well known fact, whilst the recipients of the money two generations later did not perpetuate the initial act, if your children were living in abject poverty (which many of these people are) without the infrastructure to help themselves, would you not think the moral cours of action would be for those comparatively wealthy descendants to at least share some of those I'll gotten gains...

I think countries and institutions should be grateful that these places aren't asking for much more.

200 million is pennies. Not just in human labour, but in natural resources.

Good options.

But what about the scenario that most white people are in…

Their great-grandparents were working class, their grandparents were working class, they’re parents lived in poverty with outside loos etc. and decided to buy property in the 60’s to 1990’s - which is the source of the vast majority of family wealth currently. Now two adults are of working age, taxed to the max, they might inherit something but care fees will probably take a large chunk.

Just wondering how much they benefitted from the global slave trade and what their reparations bill will be?

Its easier when a company owner / lineage can be traced, but let’s be honest, it’ll be the average tax payer who has to stump up, as they did with the reparations that ended in 2015.

In short, tackling present day inequalities by addressing areas of past inequities makes complete sense.

Whether linked to slavery or not, if the church wanted to find £100 mil in Jamaica's education system, why would that be a bad thing?

All they're doing is acknowledging WHY some people have less wealth and others more. Via theft.

I'm really struggling to see your issue. Really struggling.

Is linking it to slavery the issue for you?

It would be fine if so many parishes weren’t struggling. They also don’t seem to be interested in righting the wrongs of Church abuse victims. It’s just a trendy cause at the moment. They seem way more bothered about ancient history than recent and current issues. Very distorted.

You just need to compare the standard of living of the average person in the UK with the standard of living of the average person in Jamaica or Haiti to answer how much a UK based working class Joe/Jane benefitted from global slavery.

I'm not sure what exactly they're doing with this money, but there's no doubt black people are still affected by slavery and racism economically today.

In the US, for example, racist housing laws and behaviours are largely responsible for the huge wealth gap between black and white people as the former missed out on generations of property wealth accrual. I know this is not the same thing as UK slave reparations, but just making the point of how important money can be here - I recommend Richard Rothstein's book 'The Color of Law' about the impact of property on black people in the US.

@Bard6817. If you're talking about most white people within the UK context. Well they still benefit from free healthcare, education and generations of relative wealth stability. As do those people from different ethnicities that live here.

It's not about race per se, but acknowledgement that some societies have thrived from the literal blood of others. We are talking about giving back to places where children are literally begging on the streets. They don't have schools. Hospitals. Adequate housing. Electricity etc.

3 million children die every fucking year due to malnutrition. Every 10 seconds. They are born into circumstances in which they don't stand a chance
Their parents can not 'work' their way out of these situations. There is no infrastructure to do so.

We can't compare even the most hard done by here - of any race.

*of course this isn't restricted to places where enslaved people have come from. Or countries that were colonised. However, the data correlates for most.

PAST ISSUES REMAIN AS CURRENT ISSUES!!!

Thats not really a like for like comparison though is it? Comparing a small island which has few resources compared the resources of the Uk…. Oil revenues, population, manufacturing, logistic capability, etc.

But I guess that’s why £300 million was spent on infrastructure in the carribean from 2015 by the uk. Funded by Uk taxpayers.

Seems insane to me. The people who suffered are long, long dead. And what about the millions of white working-class people who were little better than slaves? The Anglican church kept them in line by collaborating with the big farmers and land owners. The workers were denied an education, and then told in church that God had ordered the world this way. Everyone had his place. If they didn't go to church, their employer would berate them for it and threaten them with dismissal. So poor servant girls continued to be raped and assaulted by the rich men they worked for, working class men continued to slave for a subsistence income in the fields, and the Church of England did nothing – just kept the hideous system going.

Also, I'd like to know where exactly that money will end up. I doubt it will benefit poor people. More likely it will end up in the bank accounts of various corrupt individuals.

This whole blame game is absurd. Everyone could indulge in it. Should the Danes compensate us for the Viking raids? Should the Norman French compensate us for 1066? Should we compensate the Germans for firebombing their cities? Should they compensate the people of Coventry? Should the Japanese compensate me, whose grandfather died in a Japanese POW camp?

Africans also enslaved Europeans btw (google the barbary pirates). And Africans themselves were involved in the transatlantic slave trade, as were the Arabs. Slavery began 60,000 years ago, when humans first became clever enough to work such things out. And it has never ended. There are still slaves today. In fact, statistically more people are victims of slavery now than ever before. The British were one of the few countries to try and stamp it out. After the 1830s, the Royal Navy massively reduced slavery across the world. In fact, had it not been for the American Civil War, there is a good chance Britain would have ended up in a war with the USA over this issue.

ALL of it. They should be passing all their profits over. The church has billions in property and should do the same. Same with the banks.

Well not exactly. We were repaying debt that the U.K. government took on to repay slave owners when slavery was made illegal. It’s not quite the same thing.

I am generally pro reperations and I can still see the impact of slavery. My only uncertainty is around the idea that the uk was near bankrupt after ww2 and again in the 70s. I really struggle to know how much of our 'now' is based on what happened after then. Its easier to see companies or specific institutions that you can trace their wealth - but say the the nhs, the council house etc - that grew out of a different time.

I see nothing bad about investing 100,000 as they are planning to but agree it doesn’t really make up for the past profits. The scheme the money is being taken from has 9 billion in it so even if only 10% of that was from investments in shipping companies that were in the slave trade it’s a drop in the ocean really.

There’s precedent in terms of cleaning up toxic waste. Companies used to dump toxic waste here and there and everywhere until it was outlawed by pollution laws. And then all the historic offenders had to put in tons of money into a super clean up fund to remediate all the known toxic waste dump sites. Plus if any unknown ones are found, then if the company is still around it has to clean it up or a levy is applied to top up the super fund in order to clean that toxic waste.

Because intergenerational trauma is a thing.